


Romeo Time Zone

by Unemployed_Hero



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Connie is a little shit, Eren is a brat, F/F, Jean is gay as a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide, Levi is a hopeless pessimist, M/M, Mikasa barely tolerates anyone who isn't Armin or Annie, Minor Character Death, Reiner is just hopeless, Sort of Coffee Shop AU, Trans Hange Zoë, liberal use of tags, marco is oblivious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 05:48:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8699662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unemployed_Hero/pseuds/Unemployed_Hero
Summary: The only reason Levi wants to set a foot in Maria ever again is to piss over his stepfather's grave and collect his inheritance once Kenny dies. As fate would have it, he'll have to spend more time than he imagined in his hometown and getting to know a brat that knows nothing about work, cleaning or relationships. Not that Levi is a big expert on the last one either.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRedAnxious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedAnxious/gifts).



Levi always thought that his stepfather’s death would mean that his head would stay quiet at last, but that wasn’t the case. The constant noise inside his head didn’t stop after the call he had waited more than a decade to get, since the day he ran away from that man’s house with nothing but a thin jacket and ten dollars in his pocket. He was only fifteen, hadn’t worked a day in his life and knew close to nothing about big cities. But somehow he was sure anything that was laid in front of him would necessarily be better than staying in the house of an abusive and drunken shell of a man.

He was right, although not by much.

Life’s a _bitch_.

The first night, he spended cold and angry in a park bench in the biggest town he had ever been to, the only place two dollars were able to get him to by bus. He didn’t want to waste his scarce money travelling too far. There was no point. Kenny was too drunk to even attempt to get up from the sofa to look for him. He was _safe_.

Only, he didn’t _feel_ safe.

He woke up four times, gasping for air, with the sudden certainty that when he opened his eyes there would stand Kenny, tall, drunken, angry and holding a contundent object in his hand. He wasn’t, of course. There was only the humid cold of the park around him and a broken lamp, but no stepfather.

He slept much better the second night, when he found out that he could sleep inside the train station, where the heat was on, if he pretended to wait for a train that would never come. Also, people started throwing a few coins at him. He looked the part. He had always been too short for his age, and since Kenny seldom worried about food at home as long as there was enough beer, he looked almost famished. When he woke up, there was enough money at his feet to buy himself breakfast and a train ticket to Sina.

“Mr. Ackerman?,” says the voice in the phone. “Are you…?”

“I’m here, I just… did he suffer?”, replies Levi with a thin voice.

The man on the phone pauses, maybe thinking that Levi asks out of concern. He needn’t worry.

“He choked to death. Doctors said he was conscious until the end. I’m very sor-”

“Good”, says Levi, and hangs up.

He stays there, at the edge of his bed, for several minutes. The stranger he fucked last night stirs after a while, startling him. He has already forgotten his name, but remembers the way he sucked him, like there was no place on Earth he rather be than kneeled on the rug, taking Levi in his mouth and working him until he almost fainted.

The man groans and blinks a few times trying to focus. He is blond, Levi notices grimmly. He never liked blondes. But his eyebrows are beautiful, big, trimmed and they give his face a severe look that Levi quite likes. He’s also muscular and about twice as big as Levi.

“‘Morning”, he groans sleepily.

“You better be gone when I get out of the shower”, is all Levi says to him before getting up and walking barefooted to the bathroom.

 

~

 

Levi tries not to think about what he will find when he comes home, and instead pretends to pay attention to the romantic comedy that is projected in the screens of the bus. It’s something about a guy that falls in love with a girl that works in a coffeeshop. Boring as fuck, and painfully predictable, but he finds it soothing and is able to fall asleep after a while. He is woken up two hours later, when the driver shakes his shoulder.

“Mister? This is the last stop. We have arrived to Maria”, says the man and continues through the aisle waking the rest of the passengers.

It’s dark outside, and impossibly cold. He knows it is winter, but the cold he usually feels in his apartment, a few blocks from Sina’s downtown, is nothing compared to this bone-chilling sensation. Maybe it’s the fact that he travels so lightly. He only has a white shirt and a leather jacket on, and he considers opening his duffel bag to put on more layers, but eventually decides against it. It’s too much of a pain and there’s probably a hotel close by to stay the night. He plans to wait for sunrise before going to Kenny’s lawyer to collect the will, and later stop by the cemetery to pee over his stepfather’s grave. Then, maybe lunch and taking another bus to get the hell out of this town, this time forever.

But the bus station is in the middle of nowhere and there’s not a single fucking cab around.

Just _perfect_.

 

~

 

It takes Levi two hours and a perfectly good pair of boots to get to the one and only hotel in that god-forsaken town, and it turns out it’s full.

“Are you _fucking kidding me_?”, he snarls at the boy behind the reception desk.

To give himself credit, he stops himself before knocking down every single Christmas trinket the staff thought would be _delightful_ to decorate the front desk with. The young man -his name tag says Marco Bodt- has the decency to look ashamed and more than likely to end up crying.

“I’m deeply sorry, sir. We’re full. It’s the season, you know, everyone wants to get home for the Holidays so…”, he tries to explain, but Levi is not listening anymore and instead has begun walking to the exit door.

His feet hurt, his shoes are covered in mud－because of course, he had to walk through the unpaved side of the god-awful town he was born in to cut way to the appallingly small hotel－, his shoulders ache from carrying his bag, and he is pissed. He wants to murder someone, or set his old house on fire, but he has to keep his head cool, or else he will end up stranded there for the six hours left until sunrise.

“Sir! Sir, please wait!”, he hears the boy calling him and turns around to glare at him, stopping him on his tracks. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but I know a guesthouse that has room for you, sir. It’s not far from here, and it’s very nice. I swear!”, he adds quickly, under the skeptical look Levi shoots at him.

“I will _not_ tip you, boy”, warns Levi raising a finger.

“No, no! It’s not that. I’d feel horrible if I knew someone didn’t get to see their relatives this Holidays, is all”, he says quickly, and before Levi can correct him, he points outside. “That’s my… uhm, friend, Jean, he just finished his shift and is headed to that part of town. Just tell him I said you could take a ride with him to the Jaeger’s place. He’ll take you”.

The guy he is pointing at is just outside the glass doors on the front of the hotel, lighting a cigarette in the parking lot and looking far too pissed to be bothered with anything. He is tall, slim and has a ridiculous undercut that screams ‘I want to get out of this fucking conservative hell of a town and be openly gay in San Francisco or something’. Also, his clothes are a fashion nightmare, part cheap punk style and part trying-to-impress-a-certain-desk-boy style.

Turns out Jean is kind of an asshole with a perpetual bitch face, but so obviously in love with Marco that when his name comes up, his face loses all his hostility and he is happy to help. What Levi hasn’t anticipated is his ‘ride’ being no more than a battered motorcycle that had probably seen better days about a century ago. The thing looks like it could fall apart any minute, but it’s this or sleeping out in the open, so Levi is not about to complain.

“So, have you known Marco long?”, Jean asks trying to sound casual, as Levi hops on the bike behind him. “I mean, I’ve never seen you before. Do you know his family or something?”

“Or something”, says Levi placing his duffel bag on his legs to keep it safe between his body and Jean’s.

“Great. Cool”, Jeans says awkwardly and starts the engine once it's clear he won’t get more that that for an answer.

He gives Levi his helmet, mostly because he never uses it anyway, and in a few seconds, they’re on their way through the sleeping town.

It’s been awhile since Levi walked these streets, and he finds he no longer recognizes them. There are too many new buildings, stores, parks and houses, and soon he stops trying to find out exactly where they are. At this time of night, there is not a single car circulating, so Jean speeds up, and just when Levi is about to punch him in the kidneys to make him slow down, they stop.

“Here’s the old house. You’ll have to ring the bell at the door, ‘cause everyone is probably asleep by now”.

Levi gets off the bike with a movement he hopes seems fluid and effortless, but is pretty sure just looks robotic. Not _his_ fault, he’s been on the road for more hours than he expected and his leather pants are digging into uncomfortable places, his feet are still killing him and he feels in dire need of a bath. He looks where the biker is pointing.

It’s an old house, three stories high, in need of a paint job, but with an odd feeling to it. He thinks he vaguely remembers this place. Didn’t a young doctor live here with his family or something? He thinks he remembers the wife, a kind-looking woman he bumped into all the time at the minimarket. Although her face is obscured in his memories, he remembers her dimples every time she spotted him at the queue wearing his foulest expression.

He turns to the thank the kid that brought him here, but before he can so much as open his mouth, the guy is already speeding down the street, probably on his way to kill himself colliding with an unsuspecting cow, or maybe back to the hotel to pick Marco up and take him home. _Gross_ , Levi thinks, walking to the front porch. There’s a white lamp hanging there, with a few moths flying around and hitting the glass every now and then, making a small thudding noises that somehow don’t interrupt the quiet atmosphere of the night.

Levi knocks three times with his hardened knuckles, waits five seconds, then knocks again, impatiently. He can feel a painful headache forming in the back of his head and threatening to become migraine in a few minutes. He only wants to come in,drink some water and shut himself up in a dark room until this is all over.

He’s about to bang on a window or something when he hears shuffling inside. It seems to come from the room just above the entrance, then from the back of the house, then down the stairs and finally just on the other side of the door.

Suddenly the door opens. And Levi forgets how to breathe.

 

~

 

Eren doesn’t know what’s happening. One moment he’s killing monsters in his dreams, and the next there’s a loud knocking and pain in his face and knee and arm and… did he just fell off the bed? It seems so. He groans and reaches for his pillow, nowhere near the edge of his bed, so he reaches for his sheets instead, and drags them to the floor on top of him to keep on sleeping. But the knocking sounds start again, and this time, he’s completely awake.

“Oh God, please, no”, he pleads uselessly.

But he knows he has to get up. If there wasn’t an empty room in the house, he wouldn’t even bother, but there is, and it’s his responsibility to greet the guests. Even if said guests are assholes who come around at some ungodly hour no human being deserves to be witness to.

So he gets up, stumbles out of his little room and almosts falls to his death down the stairs when the cat, Mina, chooses to rub against his calves just as he is making his way to the door. After shooing Mina away, he manages to open the door, only to find... Levi.

He gasps audibly.

 

~

 

It’s unsettling, feeling watched. It’s even worse when the one staring at you is roughly ten years younger and wearing the stupidest look you’ve ever seen. Also when he has a trail of dried saliva going from the left corner of his mouth and almost reaching his ear, however impossible that seems, and his face is torn between surprise, familiarity and, for some reason, deep pure horror.

Levi raises an eyebrow, not impressed. Or at least pretending not to be. But he is.

The green eyed _buffoon_ is absolutely, sinfully, irritably, drop-dead _gorgeous_.

Levi loathes him immediately.

“I want a glass of water and an aspirin, if you got it”, says Levi.

That at least seems to shake the boy from whatever freakout he is having.

“What”, says the boy, not even as a question.

“Oh, nothing. I was just passing by at two-fucking-AM and it occurred to me that one of these houses ought to have some aspirin”, Levi deadpans. “I want a room, you imbecile”.

“I’ve got a room”, he says glancing quickly to the inside and then to Levi again, but makes no effort to move aside to let him in.

“I have money?”, offers Levi starting to think that the boy might be slow at thinking, so he makes sure to speak clearly and with several pauses. “Look, I just need to rest my head for a little while. I’ll probably leave tomorrow afternoon, so it’s okay if you have it booked for someone else for Christmas and New Year. I just… I want to rest”.

And there it is. The headache. He winces when he feels it crawling behind his eyes and invading his skull, and he presses the heel of his hand against it, in a futile attempt to stop it. But he knows it’s too late for that. No amount of aspirin would be able to help now.  
Levi finds himself falling as if on slow motion, and suddenly there are arms around him, catching him.

“Hey, no, no, no. You can’t pass out in the porch. Mum will kill me”, says the brunette, dragging him inside.

But Levi can’t really hear him. All that fills his ears is a sharp buzz, somewhat like the sound of waves crashing against rocks, like thousands of bees trying to drive away a dangerous animal, like too long nails scratching a chalkboard insistently. Only louder. And much more painful.

He once got checked at Sina’s local hospital, a monstrous tall and grey square of a building. He thought he may be dying of a brain tumor or something, but the doctors found nothing wrong in his head after an MRI and other tests. “So, what? Am I just going crazy?”, he had asked defiantly, but eyeing the psychiatric wing of the hospital with wariness, preparing to flee at the first suggestion of him staying for a few days for examination.

“My best guess is stress. Do you have financial problems, Mr. Ackermann? Any recent deaths in your family? Is your current lifestyle overwhelming?”

He was startled. He had found a job as a bartender in a club near the edge of town, earned enough to pay rent to a decent apartment and had taken the habit of fucking every client that seemed interested after his shift. He wouldn’t say his life was the best, but it seemed pretty sweet to him.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But you need to have a healthy way of releasing these feelings of stress, because it will take a toll on your health, sooner rather than later”.

He knows he doesn’t have it. Still, he nods and gets out of there before the doctor changes his mind about the cause of the noise. But right here and now, while that green-eyed boy drags him through the door and into a cozy living room, he can’t help but think that maybe he just needed arms to fall into.

“Get your hands off me, you unhygienic brat”, he gets to say as he is manhandled into a large stained couch.

“Eren”, says the boy.

“Aaron?”, he asks, just to stay awake a little longer.

Levi can hear him shuffling around the room, then coming back.

“No, Eren. That’s my name”.

“What kind of stupid-ass name is that?”

“A better one than Levi”, mutters the boy spitefully.

There’s a pause, and Levi swears he can hear fucking crickets, as if this was a sitcom.

“Did I tell you my name?”, asks Levi slowly.

“Yes, you did. And then you just fell right there on the porch and became a pain in the ass to move. How much do you weight, anyway? How is it possible for a guy your height to be so heavy?”, rambles Eren trying to keep himself busy.

He kneels beside the sofa and begins to remove Levi’s boots. Levi opens his eyes, not even sure when he had shut them tightly, and watches the boy fumbling with his shoes.

“Aspirin?”

“Oh, yeah, just a second!”, Eren says, sounding too grateful to have something else to do that doesn’t involve being too close to the new guest, and flees to the next room.

Levi watches him go, and notices that the noise has lowered to a gentle hum inside his skull. He takes off his boots and his jacket and reaches for his wallet. Eren comes back from the kitchen with a glass of water and some pills and hands everything to Levi, then stands awkwardly in the middle of the room.

“Don’t you have to get the room ready, brat?”

“It’s ready”, he announces sounding suddenly annoyed. “Mom made me clean it earlier today in case some distant family of Mikasa showed up for the funeral, but it turns out nobody came. So it’s all yours now”.

Eren takes the duffel bag that had been unceremoniously abandoned near the door and starts up the stairs, so Levi’s only choice is to swallow the pills, get up the couch and follow. Most of the house is in the dark, but Eren moves as though he could find his way around even blindfolded. Levi’s not so lucky. When he is about to reach the top of the stairs, a ball of fur comes out of nowhere and makes him trip.

“Son of a…!”

The only thing he can reach out to in order to retain his balance and not make a fool out of himself in front of a stranger, is said stranger’s body, but it turns out, Eren isn’t expecting a grown man to suddenly grab him from behind, so they both end up in the floor.

“Mina! I told you to stop trying to kill everybody”, growls Eren, face down on the floor.

The black cat is barely visible from where Levi’s face is halfway buried in the soft fabric of the back of Eren’s hoodie, but he hears her purr and the feels her fur against his head.

“She likes you”, says Eren shuffling to get up.

“I hate cats”, replies Levi sitting up and then standing.

Levi hadn’t noticed how much noise they made until every door in the first floor starts opening and light fills the hallway where he and Eren and a black cat stand awkwardly. Levi isn’t one for public performances, so he takes his bag from where Eren dropped it and marches as dignified as he can toward the last door.

“Everything is alright, you can go back to bed, I’m so sorry for the noise!”, he can hear Eren making excuses as he runs behind him to show him his room.

A few of the guests mumble something along the lines of ‘disrespectful youngsters’, but go back to their accommodations quickly. Levi reaches the door and swings it open just before Eren can reach for the handle. And what he finds inside just makes him wish he had stayed the night at the bus station, curled on a bench, freezing.

At the end, Eren spends two and a half hours cleaning the room, until Levi is satisfied with the lack of spiderwebs, powder and unidentified stains. By the time Eren is allowed to go back to his comfortable bed, it’s almost 6AM, his sheets are cold as ice and Mina has reclaimed half of his mattress for herself. He has no choice but to curl up at the edge of the bed and try to sleep, knowing that his first love, the most infuriating man on earth, is probably looking for more dirt to make him get out of bed to clean it.

He is not wrong. 

But Levi is not just thinking about germs as he paces around the small room.

He’s thinking about how his only home is so full of his own demons, he didn’t even consider arriving there today and instead chose to stay at some stranger’s house.

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I wrote for my best friend because it's their birthday today (yay). Be brutal with me if I made mistakes in grammar, spelling and anything else, I need this to be perfect. I'm not an Ereri shipper, but needs must when the devil drives (in this case, the devil is Andy, and when Andy drives, everyone must pray for their lives).


End file.
